In Season 2, most content has a hidden Attack Power Gate that you must breach in order to deal your normal damage to the enemy. This even applies to contents like Chaos Dungeons, and can result in failure without ability to retry if you go in undergeared.

Attack Power can be seen in your character details at the very top. The sum of Attack Power is derived from a formula that is influenced by Weapon Attack and Main Stat. Combat stats like Critical and Agility are not factored into this. Engravings such as Cursed Doll and other external AP increases such as Silmael’s Guild Buff do affect Attack Power however the AP Gate is calculated before both of these two things are factored. This includes Malus Engravings that reduce Attack Power. This means if you have 16,000 AP and the Cursed Doll Engraving increases this to about 18,000, you will still deal reduced damage to Belganus, which is recommended you have around 17,000 AP in order to deal your correct damage to.

Outfits which increase your Main Stat are factored into overcoming the AP Gate.

When your AP is insufficient for a content that you’re facing, there is a drastic cut to your damage output that is exponential. This is what prevents players from using, for example, T2 accessories in T3 content. The sheer loss of Main Stat has a significantly bigger impact on one’s output than the loss of combat stats and engravings, for example going from T2 Artifact accessories to T3 Rare accessories.

For a frame of reference, challenging Yoho of Dark Night (5-3, 1355) while wearing a full set of T2 Artifact accessories incurs a damage loss of nearly 80%! Whereas against Ingrexion (5-2, 1325) the same accessories results in a damage loss of around 30%. And against Heavy Armor Nakrasena (5-1, 1302) there is virtually no damage loss.

The higher up content you go, the more difficult it is to overcome the AP Gate with weaker gear.

It is strongly advised that by the time that you’ve reached the second Guardian Raid within a new Item Tier that you have switched to that Item Tier’s accessories, though you can often afford to keep the previous Item Tier’s necklace since it provides the greatest amount of stats and allows you to use a few jewels without incurring the penalty. It should still be swapped out by the third Guardian Raid.

Credit by Saintone’s

This is information aggregated during my time playing Lost Ark on the Korean servers post-Season 2. As this is regional, some information may not apply to the RU, JP, or Global versions of the game. You can find gameplay of LAO Season 2 KR from my Twitch or YouTube channels. For corrections or questions you can reach me on Discord at Saintone#4599.